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Ireland and the Making
of Britain
2. IRISH WORK BEGINNING OF ENGLISH CIVILIZATION
It was at this crucial period that the Irish missionaries
appeared on the scene and started a more enduring movement
of conversion. For it was they who with strong
hands put the bit and bridle on the wild English tribes,
tamed their savagery, kindled into flame the human spark
within them, and led them despite themselves along the
paths of Christian civilization. The work was prolonged
and suffered many setbacks, from the natural backwardness
and brutality inherent in a savage population, from
Danish inroads, from unceasing tribal conflicts, and from
pestilence and famine. But these great Irishmen persevered
and made their work permanent. Where the
Roman had signally failed, the Irishman signally suc-
ceeded, and wherever he took the work in hand the En-
glish never looked back. In the work of these Irishmen
English history and English civilization find written their
book of Genesis.
William of Malmesbury tells the tale simply when he
talks of the faith of the English having been "brought to
maturity by the learning of the Irish."
are more expansive.
Modern writers
"The men who really plowed and harrowed the
soil which was lying fallow among the masculine and
vigorous peoples of northern and central England, of
Northumbria and Mercia, were not Augustine's monks,
but, as we have seen, the never-tired, resourceful, and
sympathetic spiritual children of St. 1
and their disciples."
Columba, St. Aidan
The immediate call that brought the van of the Irish
missionaries among the Anglo-Saxon tribes came from
Oswald, the native ruler of the Northumbrians. Oswald,
i Howorth, Golden Days of the English Church, II. 171.
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